daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African
languages. However, I
think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic.
Who is? I have not seen this.
The same problems exist for
languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely
"African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and
just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
million speakers and only 6 articles)?
I think we absolutely ARE taking efforts in ALL parts of the world,
simultaneously. I had a meeting in Delhi with someone who is interested
in pursuing a joint project to develop African languages.
I have no idea who you have in mind who thinks anything racist or
paternalistic about African languages, but if they do, then they do not
represent the attitudes of the broad community or me.
I think the fear being expressed, or in any case the one I'll express,
is that there are a bunch of Americans and Europeans saying that we
ought to do such-and-such about African languages, or such-and-such to
change African societies for the better---basically, paternalistic
attitudes that the enlightened Westerners have arrived on their glorious
steeds of Information to fix the problems of Africa. See also,
[[en:white man's burden]].
A non-paternalistic attitude would be to treat African languages like we
treat all other languages. Even though quite a few Westerners are
interested in the subject of spreading information in China, for
example, the Chinese-language projects have been run by Chinese speakers.
-Mark